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Friday, May 16, 2014

Time Enough for Locks

By Kathleen Rice Adams

For as long as there have been haves and wanna-haves, the
haves have sought ways to secure their valuables from thieving wanna-haves. History no longer remembers
the inventor of the first lock, but it is said the key was invented by Theodore
of Samos in the sixth century B.C., which leads to the suspicion locks have been around
much longer. In fact, crude locking mechanisms dating to the early Pharaonic period have
been found in Egyptian ruins.

The first devices resembling what we know today as door
locks were discovered in the palace of Persian king Sargon II, who reigned from
722 to 705 B.C. They were large, clumsy devices made of wood; nevertheless,
they served as prototypes for contemporary security devices.

The first all-metal locks, probably made by English
craftsmen, appeared between 870 and 900 A.D. in Rome. A row of bars of varying lengths, called
tumblers, dropped into holes drilled through the horizontal
bolt securing a door or gate. Only the person who possessed a metal bar fitted
with pins corresponding to the tumblers could shove the tumblers upward through the
holes, thus freeing the bolt.

No great advancements in lock technology occurred until
about the fourteenth century A.D., when locks small enough to carry
appeared. Traveling tradesmen used the “convenient locks” to secure their money
and other valuables.

Although padlocks were known to ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and
Romans, the first combination lock didn’t appear until the eighteenth century. Until
1873, most banks used combination locks of some kind to secure their vault. The
secret to effective combination locks was creating a complex series of letters and numbers
that would frustrate anyone who tried to disarm the mechanism. The code for the
combination lock securing the mid-nineteenth-century safe in the U.S. Treasury in Washington
D.C., for example, could not be opened without a lengthy series of letters and
numbers that provided 1,073,741,824 possible combinations. Because determining
the code by organized guesswork would require 2,042 years, 324 days, and one hour to crack,
the lock was considered burglar-proof.

Combination locks had one big Achilles heel, though: It didn’t
take long for criminals to figure out they could kidnap a bank employee and
require him or her to dial in the correct code.

In 1873, James Sargent invented what he called a theft-proof
lock. Theft-proof locks combined a combination lock with a timer that prevented the safe from opening until a certain number of hours had passed, even if
one knew the combination.

Ruins of the 1906 Nye & Ormsby County Bank in Manhattan,
Nevada. The bank crumbled, but the vault survived.

By the late 1870s, theft-proof locks were de rigueur in banks all over the U.S. Though
they weren’t quite unbreakable — thieves simply swapped dynamite or liquid nitroglycerin for captive
bank employees and blew open safes — theft-proof locks thwarted more thieves than
any previous mechanism. Called time locks these days, much more sophisticated descendants of Sargent's invention remain popular devices for banks and other high-security areas.

A bank vault equipped with a theft-proof lock causes all
sorts of trouble for the hero in “The Worst Outlaw in the West,” my
contribution to Prairie Rose Publications’ new anthology, Lassoing a Groom. The book, containing stories by Jacquie Rogers,
Kirsten Lynn, Tracy Garrett, Kristy McCaffrey, Linda Hubalek, and me, will bow
May 20. In the meantime, I’ve plopped an excerpt from my story below.

“The Worst Outlaw in
the West”

“Let me see that.” Laredo pulled
the banker’s daughter aside and stepped around her to examine the door. “I’ll
be damned.” He cringed. You’ve been away
from civilization too long. With as much contrition as he could muster, he
turned to face the plainest woman he’d ever seen. Except for the colorless oval
above a high collar, everything between her hat and her hemline was mouse-brown.
“Sorry, ma’am. My mouth sometimes forgets it’s around ladies.”

Her brows rose toward the brim
of the godawful thing on her head. “You’ve been around ladies?”

Ouch. “Not often. I’ll grant you that.” He hooked a thumb over his
shoulder. “What is that thing?”

“A theft-proof lock.” She
enunciated each syllable with care, as though he didn’t speak English. “It’s
the latest in bank security.”

“Since when?”

She pinned him with a skeptical
squint. “You’re not much of a bank robber, are you?”

Laredo yanked the bandana from
his mouth and nose. There had to be a better way to disguise a man’s face. Damn
thing was all wet. “I’m a hell of bank robber. Been havin’ a dry spell lately,
that’s all.” Since the day of his birth. “You ever hear of the Hawkins Gang?”

She raised her chin. “I can’t
say I have.”

And therein lay his dilemma: neither had anyone else.

"The Worst Outlaw in the West"

Laredo Hawkins has one ambition: to redeem his family's
honor by pulling the first successful bank robbery in the Hawkins clan's long,
disappointing history. Spinster Prudence Barrett is desperate to save her
family's bank from her brother's reckless investments. A chance encounter
between the dime-novel bandit and the old maid may set the pair on a path to
infamy...if either can find a map.

Speak up, Rustler. I can't hear that whisperin' all the way over here. :-D

Thanks for the compliment on the story. I came up with the idea of a bank robber foiled in his attempt to rob a vault, and then I had to figure out WHY he couldn't get into the darn thing. At the time, I had no clue time-lock safes were invented during the period in which I wanted to set the story, Pure luck. :-D

Kathleen, what an interesting post! I never really thought about locks, but seems you, my Texas sister, have given this a LOT of thought--and research, for your story THE WORST OUTLAW IN TEXAS. What a wonderful tale--talk about TWISTY! Oh wait...isn't TWISTY your middle name? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!Cheryl

Just says to me we've been thieving from each other since time began. Ya know, I was wondering how the heck you were going to work this whole lock thing into something about your story. Leave it to you to think of some odd kind of weirdness like a lock to give the hero some grief, Kathleen. Heck, I already love the title. I suppose this will be another story to "steal" our hearts. LOL

Like Cheryl's, my heroes are all hunkered in a little room, trying to hide themselves under tables and chairs or behind sofas and pleading "please pick anyone but me!" The heroines are in another room saying "let me at 'em!" ;-)

I enjoyed reading the historical tidbits you shared about locks. I had no idea time locks dated that far back. (nice plot device, though) lol My husband is a banker (loan officer), and he tells a story of one of the tellers setting the time lock at the end of the work day and, instead of setting it for overnight, she set it for two days and they had to 'borrow' operating money from a bank in a neighboring town in order to keep their doors open for those two days. 0_o

Thanks, Doris! I'm glad you got a snicker out of the excerpt. Every once in a while my offbeat sense of humor sneaks out. ;-)

I was a bit taken by surprise by the history of locks. I intended merely to look up different kinds of bank vault locks that might have been in use during the last few decades of the 19th century, and those dang research bunnies led me on a merry chase. Darn those bunnies, anyway. :-D

Gotta watch out for those creatures, they have a devious side. There sending me on a merry chase right now for a Woman MD that ain't where she's suppose to be...dang it. Still and all, they trip is fun when I get a chance to relax. *Grin* Doris

I just researched the subject for The Hardest Ride sequel. Bud's depositing money in the back and is shown the safe to alleviate his reluctance.

The clerk took us into a back room. It had a wooden door, but behind it was an iron-bar door like a jail. Had a big box lock on it. The room had brick walls, no window. Against a wall was a big dark green safe with fancy gold letters on its double doors. I couldn’t make out what they said. That safe was taller than me and over half that wide.“Made by the Diebold Safe & Lock Company of New York. The most secure safe anywhere in south Texas. Has a second set of doors inside.” He was sure proud of it.“Being damn Yankee-made, is it any good then?”He laughed. “Oh, yes, sir, regardless of it being made by damn Yankees.”Marta looked it over suspicious like. Side-glancing at the clerk, she gave it a hard kick, and scrunched up her face. She nodded and limped off.“She’s good with it,” I said.“You have a pleasant day, Mr. Eugen.”

Gordo, we'll have to compare notes about safes and locks! It's not one of those topics people are lining up to research. :-D

When is the sequel due to publish? I so enjoyed THE HARDEST RIDE, and I'm looking forward to reading more about Bud and Marta. Those two just leaped off the pages. Wonderful characterization there, my friend. :-)

If it's all the same to you, doc, I'd rather not imagine getting locked in a time-lock vault! :-D

Thanks for your kind words about Laredo and Prudence. That means a lot to me, coming from someone whose westerns I admire. Your characters and plot twists are always fabulous. It's just not fair that a Scot writes better tales about the Wild West than many Americans do! :-D

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PRP is a publishing company devoted to publishing westerns and western romances written by women.

PRAIRIE ROSE PUBLICATIONS was opened in August, 2013, by LIVIA J. WASHBURN and CHERYL PIERSON, two authors who saw a need for such an imprint. Usually, when people think “westerns” they think of male authors and male readers—but that’s not true in today’s world. Many women are just as interested in reading—and writing—westerns as their male counterparts; and of course, western romance has always been popular among the ladies!